


Desperation

by SecondSilk



Series: Five Times Remus Didn't Tell Sirius He Loved Him [4]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-15
Updated: 2010-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSilk/pseuds/SecondSilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tensions mount, and something has to break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desperation

Grimmauld place was the worst Remus had ever seen it, after the Christmas holidays ended and the Weasleys went back home. Sirius wasn't. Remus had seen Sirius his first night in the Gryffindor dormitory, had seen him at Regulus's funeral, and that night in Shrieking Shack at the end of Harry's third year. But the silence in the house was quiet, rather that oppressive, as though it, too, felt bereft. The uneasiness Remus felt was almost entirely Sirius's fault, and Remus wished there was someone else there to distract Sirius.

It had usually been Remus who had talked Sirius down from his angry-at-the-world rages. But Remus was as angry as Sirius, and really not up to playing devil's advocate. Instead he was left to watch Sirius pace from one side of the basement kitchen to the other. Occasionally Sirius paused to glare at Remus, sitting still at one end of the kitchen table, before continuing his journey.

"I don't like it," Sirius said.

"So I had gathered," Remus replied calmly.

Sirius glared at him for a moment before turning his back again. There was silence for several long moments.

"Snape!" Sirius said, in the same angry-disgusted tone he had always used to refer to their nemesis.

"He is the best qualified," Remus said.

Sirius found an especially focused glare for him. Remus justified his current position by the knowledge that Snape was not the devil, technically.

"Dumbledore is the best qualified," Sirius said.

"You know why it can't be that," Remus said.

Sirius rounded on him with a triumphant swirl of robes.

"Harry doesn't," he said, jabbing a finger at Remus.

"Do you think it's fair to tell him everything? In earnest, Sirius, he's just turned fifteen, he's at school, he sitting his OWLs this year. Dumbledore can protect him while he's at Hogwarts. Does he need to be worried about everything else as well?"

"He has to spend hours alone with Snivellus probing through his mind."

"We can trust Snape," Remus said.

"Does Harry have to like him?" Sirius asked.

Remus sighed. "No," he said. There was more of an argument to be made, but Remus was really too tired; he didn't want to continue the argument.

"We were eleven when Voldemort started killing people we knew, Remus. James was twelve when he realised that he would have to protect Lily."

"Harry lost people before he was born," Remus said sharply. "And he faced Voldemort before he was twelve. He deserves as little worry as possible."

"He deserves as much information as possible," Sirius said. "We can tell him why Voldemort is after him and why he has to learn Occlumency."

"Tell him that Voldemort was never after his parents?" Remus said. "Tell him that he will have to kill somebody? He's the 'hope of the Wizarding world;' he needs to be prepared, not worried."

"Prepared?" Sirius roared.

His arms waved wildly over his head for a moment, but the words weren't waiting there for him. Remus felt his own quiet control desert him.

"He's not James, Sirius. You can't go haring off the way you used. We have to make sure that he'll be safe, and ready to do what he has to. What can you offer him that Dumbledore and Snape can't? Restlessness, overconfidence and a house full of Dark Arts objects?"

Sirius, for the first time in months, was absolutely still. He turned slowly, and leant on the table so he looked down it at Remus. The suddenly calm look on his face, and the piecing focus of Sirius's gaze, reached deep into Remus and squeezed something painfully. He had no time to consider what it might have been before Sirius came up with an answer.

"I love him," Sirius said quietly, claiming all the implications of that answer.

"I love you," Remus said, in the same dark and certain tone. "You want to risk yourself, think for a moment of all of us who would left behind again."

Sirius was silent for a full thirty seconds. Remus carefully drew a breath and let it out slowly. They watched each other carefully along the long expanse of empty wood.

"You selfish bastard," Sirius said, eventually. "Your feelings count in this argument? You don't care about him either. Am I the only one who can see what he's feeling? Dumbledore won't look, and Snape won't care, and you've just dismissed it out of hand. Harry needs someone he can trust to tell him everything. Someone he doesn't need to impress, someone he can yell at. I can offer that."

"You can't offer anyone anything if you're dead," Remus snapped. "If you're caught again Harry loses the one person he knows loves him for himself."

"And you lose me, Moony, very touching." Sirius's voice dropped further into scathing derision. "I barely know the boy and I'm his godfather."

"A brilliant job you did of that, too, Padfoot," Remus said.

He watched with no small amount of vicious glee and relief as Sirius's entire body slumped. He seemed to fall in on himself and collapsed into a chair at his far end of the table – the one that meant he wouldn't have to look at Remus.

"I'm sorry," Remus said.

"No, you're not."

Sirius rested his head on his arms, folded on the table. His dark hair hid his head against his black robes. Remus was more than a whole arm's length too far away, but his fingers still tingled with the uncertain desire to push the hair gently off Sirius's face. And he wasn't sorry.

Sirius took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He took another, as though he was holding back tears.

"They're dead," Sirius said, through the obvious thickness in his throat. He tried again, "they're dead." "They're dead," he said once more, and his voice began to take on the familiar cold certainly that had always been the basis of Sirius's rash confidence.

"Yes."

"Peter's a lying, stinking rat."

"Yes."

"Dumbledore has some great plan that will save us all, even if it kills us."

"He always does."

"We can trust Snape."

"Apparently."

Sirius looked up from his arms. He had recognised the faint wryness in Remus's tone.

"And you love me."

"I do."

Sirius let out harsh bark of laughter. There was silence for a moment before Sirius's laughter broke free. The sound echoed around the cavernous room, having the corners knocked off it by the dark walls. By the time it reached Remus, he could ignore the desperate edge to it. He could ignore the familiar manic light in Sirius's eyes as he had done when he was sixteen and say "yes," when Sirius asked if he wanted something stronger to drink.

Sirius disappeared for a few moments and returned carrying a bottle of his grandfather's scotch; laid down at the time the whole of Britain had been celebrating. Sirius poured two carefully measured glasses and passed one to Remus before taking the seat next to him at the table.

Remus drank slowly, not daring to interrupt Sirius's mood. Sirius was perhaps too quiet, but he wasn't shouting. And he was thinking again, so Remus waited until the thought processes reached their conclusions.

"Do we have anything else left?" Sirius asked.

"Harry," Remus replied promptly. "We have Harry. We have a war to fight. And we have each other."

Sirius took a deep swallow of the alcohol and set his glass down carefully. He stared through the cut glass bottom to the table.

"I don't know what any of this means," he said.

Remus reached across the table and gently placed his hand on Sirius's. He stroked the back of Sirius's hand with gentle fingers. Sirius watched with something like detachment.

"I don't know what that means, either," he said.

Remus stilled his fingers. Sirius entwined their fingers together and looked up into Remus's eyes. Remus smiled.

"I don't either," he said. "But that's never stopped you before."

The grin that appeared on Sirius's face took Remus back years, back to evenings spent not doing homework in front of the common room fire, and for the first time he was pleased to remember that they had the house pretty much to themselves. From the glint of the smile echoed in Sirius's grey eyes, he was too.


End file.
